Those of us who live in Massachusetts always had a different relationship with the late Ted Kennedy than did the rest of the country – and, for that matter, the world.

Depending on your point of view, Kennedy was either an icon of progressivism or an avatar of evil. What he was not, except to those of us who were fortunate enough to be his constituents, was a regular guy who went about the mundane business of representing his state in the US Senate with diligence, seriousness and joy. For us, Kennedy was not a symbol. He was a real-life human being.

The final stage of Kennedy's home-state career – that of the eccentric but beloved uncle – goes back to 1994, when he faced the most serious challenge of his political life. After years of highly publicised debauchery, Kennedy staggered into his re-election campaign against a clean-cut, clean-living, dauntingly well-financed Republican businessman named Mitt Romney. The ever-pliable Romney ran as a liberal that year. And Kennedy found himself tied with Romney in the polls with less than two months to go.

Yet Kennedy had several assets that were not readily apparent at the start of the campaign. For one thing, he had come to terms with his alcohol problem, delivering a speech at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government that fell short of acknowledging he was an alcoholic, but signalled he intended to clean up his act.

For another, he had a new wife – Victoria Reggie Kennedy. Kennedy's long-suffering first wife, Joan, had her own problems with alcohol. She could hardly be blamed, given what her husband had put her through. But she was not the person to help Ted turn his life around. Vicki Kennedy, calm and supportive, was.

So when the two senatorial candidates took the stage at Boston's historic Faneuil Hall on the evening of 26 October 1994, the expectations for Kennedy couldn't have been lower. I was there, on assignment for the Boston Phoenix. And I can report that there was electricity in the air – the sort of electricity that stems from expecting to see a near-legendary figure finally brought to earth. Instead, something very different happened.

With television broadcasting the debate nationally, Kennedy, obese and haggard, stepped out of his fumble-mouthed persona and wiped up the floor with Romney. Rather than getting lost in a tangle of half-formed thoughts, Kennedy forthrightly portrayed himself as a fighter for universal healthcare, abortion rights and other liberal causes – a pugnacious stance enhanced by the fact that he was, characteristically, bellowing.

The two men stretched the truth in seeking to portray the other as having benefited from questionable business deals. But Romney never recovered when Kennedy responded: "Mr Romney, the Kennedys are not in public service to make money. We have paid too high a price in our commitment to public service."

Kennedy's invocation of his dead brothers was, of course, a cheap shot. But it was also politically brilliant. On election day, Kennedy thrashed Romney by 17 points. If you go strictly by the final numbers, in retrospect Romney's challenge looks like that of just another pretender. But Kennedy's overwhelming victory wouldn't have been possible if he hadn't risen to the occasion at a moment when few thought he had it in him.

I must confess my near-total immunity to the Kennedy mythology – a consequence, perhaps, of having been asked all my life whether I'm "a Kennedy". (Well, yes, but ...) Still, like so many of us in Massachusetts, I've always had a soft spot for Ted. I'll leave it to others to assess whether he was a great national leader and simply observe that he was a good home-state senator, as engaged in local concerns and constituent matters as he was in his long, losing (so far) struggle for universal healthcare.

In the last days of his life, Kennedy was involved in an effort to tweak state law so that governor Deval Patrick, a Democrat, would be able to appoint an interim successor to Kennedy who'd serve in the US Senate during the five months before a special election could be held. Ironically, Kennedy was among those Democrats who supported taking the gubernatorial appointment away from then-governor Romney five years ago, when it looked like our junior senator, John Kerry, might be elected president.

Kennedy's switch wasn't quite as hypocritical as his opponents tried to pretend. Before the law was changed in 2004, the governor had the power to fill such a vacancy until the end of the term, with no special election. I think Kennedy's proposal was modest, quite smart and testimony to how engaged he was right up to the end. He was the quintessential public man, and he died in public, plotting who should succeed him even as his terminal illness kept him out of sight and away from the work he loved so much.